Star Wars: The Old Republic Review

[Nami nom noms]

I actually enjoy the space battles... :/

its like starfox 64 with a star wars skin.

 

[Starke]

RPers in Champions Online have to basically ignore every quest if they want to RP a villain or anything besides a goody two-shoes.

Honestly, that's more of a tone issue with CO's writing, though. It's true, there is no villain faction, so no RPing an active villain. The rest is soaked in the silver age. So the absolute insanity in the quest threads creates a kind of drug fueled bender of heroes who are both paragons of humanity and utter psychopaths. Superheros who will gleefully gun down mind controlled prison guards, while being unwilling to talk to a man about the dangers of his butterfly collection.

Though, I think, for example, doing the same with Terraria would be a mistake, as it takes the game a good couple hours to get going.

Now, I know you said you find Bioware's writing since Empire to be rather lacking and clique, but I want to pass this quote back to you; the Old Republic stories take a little while to get going. You admit you didn't like what you saw and had spent some twenty hours with the game, and that's valid. You saw some of the story and what you saw, you didn't like. Can't get much more fair than that. However, you also admit you never saw any of the stories to their conclusion and there in lies my issue. See, all of the characters' stories are muti-level; each 'chapter' takes place over several planets and they are all different. I see it as kind of like reading the first chapter of a book and deciding the book is bad. You are by all means perfectly within reason to say that what you read was cliche and tripe, but I don't think you can make an accurate summary of the entire story. You can comment on the writing style used, but the story as a whole--the actual plot--is out of your reach.

What isn't out of reach, however, is the ability to recognize familiar patterns in Bioware's writing. For good or ill, Bioware's writing has always had a certain... let's say, "consistent" pattern. With the possible exception of MDK2.

The issue isn't that the writing in TOR is cliche. The issue is it is Bioware writing. The exact same thing I've seen in one form or another for over a decade now. So saying, I can't accurately assess the entire story arc from the beginning should be a valid criticism, but in this case it flat out isn't.

Spoiler: A huge spoiler to one of the Sith Inquisitor story arcs.

As a Sith inquisitor, you spend the early parts of your story collecting artifacts for your master. Characters come and go, plots are explored and events occur throughout. Ultimately, the end of this particular chapter: your master was gathering artifacts that will enable her to take over your body. It's obvious why someone who never gets to finishing this many, many hours of story could think it's just fetch quests and clique, but they most certainly can't comment on the actual plot, because they won't have any idea this is what it's about.

I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused here, was that a plot from TOR, a plot from the original KOTOR, the plot of Jade Empire, or the plot of ME1? No, wait, I remember, it's that plot from DAO with Morrigan. Or was it Merril in DA2? Either way.

See, here's the problem, Bioware did that game already. They did that story. In fact, while I'm being flippant, they've done variations of it for ages. So, while saying that I didn't know that was coming is great, the fact is that is another remix out of the Bioware cliche factory, and exactly the kind of thing I was criticizing the game for, in spite of having (theoretically) not played the game enough to know it was coming.

And no other MMO has anything on that. You can't compare class quests in other MMOs that *all* amount to receiving new spells or skills, to the long, sprawling, detailed and twist riddled arcs of all eight different classes. And, as I said earlier, no one else will have the same experience as you. Sure, they can play the same class and choose the same options, but your character is *yours* and they exist in *your* story.

The issue is, and this is critical. Stories, ongoing, overarching, stories are not new to MMOs. Name an MMO released in the last few years, nearly any MMO and there is a story to the game. Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, Hellgate London... all of these have stories they're trying to tell. All of them have multiple stories they're trying to tell. Age of Conan eve uses the same cutscene/dialog choice options that The Old Republic does.

The issue is, all of the games I just mentioned, and every other MMO I've ever played at least had the sense to understand some players aren't here to be held hostage by the story. They just want to get in, kill people, and take their shit. What TOR does do is assume that if you're playing it, you're there for the story, and only for the story, and holds you hostage to that story.

Most MMO writing does understand that the player might not be there for that, and so it aims for a kind of efficiency. It lets you know everything you need to know about a quest to roleplay with it, or just execute it in one or two shots of text. In TOR, instead, we have players whining about their family, or about how they're more than a match for you, or whatever, without any point. It often doesn't even build the story, it's just there to waste time.

Also, your comment about playing a character Bioware made for you seems odd to me. All my characters are, well, mine. I played them with a specific personality in mind (greedy, corrupt, kind, shallow, lawful, etc.) and went about deciding what quests to accept and how to act accordingly. That's pretty much how every RPG works; they're limited by how much programming the makers can do.

This is actually a bit of a shell game on Bioware's part. Remember how when DA2 was released some fans threw a fit that they were being forced into playing a specific character? The thing is, in DAO you're given basically one of six characters. The different origin stories. And, no matter what you do from that point on, you've basically set your character's history. You can change how the character responds, but you can't change who that character is.

With DA2, it was pretty painfully obvious for people, you were playing Hawke, and there wasn't an alternate character at all.

For what it's worth, Mass Effect does the same thing, but it hides it a bit better behind the service history and background. But no matter what you're doing, you're always playing Shepard. You may be playing him as a paragon or a renegade, but it's still Bioware's Commander Shepard, a fact that gets painfully obvious in ME2.

Now, in TOR, you have 8 characters. If you're playing a smuggler, and your friend is playing a smuggler, you're playing the exact same character, you may be playing them in different ways, you're going for nobility while they're going absolutely mercenary, but at the end of the day you're both playing the same character. And at best we're talking about different interpretations on the same character. Not different characters.

In contrast, if you take most MMOs, part of where their story, arguably, suffers is because they do leave you completely free to define whatever kind of character you want within your class. For Champions it's a build your own superhero. If you're wanting to actually make a character, just putting together a costume can easily form the nexus for a truly distinct character with their own unique back story and outlook. Now, obviously the game can't know what that history is, but you can build off that. Galaxies (I'm told) was the same way. The game really opened up and let you design and develop your own character who could be anyone in the galaxy. If you rolled up a Bounty Hunter, and your friend rolled up a Bounty Hunter you weren't both trying to get into the exact same slot in the exact same competition.

I just don't understand the criticism of 'you promised story and there isn't one'. You can't possibly expect every single player to play a story that changes the world around you for everyone else, and no other MMO has had such an involved story.

WoW actually does. Due to phasing you can actually alter the world as you progress through quests.

Sure, in another MMO you can play an assassin and, in your mind, be something of a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor and only killing when you absolutely must. But that's not reflected in your story. In fact, you don't have a story. To the game, you are just another player accepting quests. In TOR, the world's characters *know* if you kill wantingly, they know if you are greedy or corrupt, your companions *will* comment on your behavior depending on their own personal ethics.

What it won't do is change your arc. This is another one of TOR's real failings. The moral choices you make, don't actually influence the story as a whole. The game can give you the illusion it knows, but it needs to segregate that off away from other players, where they cannot see the consequences.

This game, in my eyes, is a revolution, just not the kind people are willing to see. World of Warcraft copied countless numbers of mechanics from the MMO's before it, including Ultima Online and Everquest. But now that WoW is popular, every time an MMO uses these universal tools, they are called a clone, they get branded derivative and are brushed aside. I suppose first-person-shooters better stop using guns -- they all copied that. Maybe racing games better stop using a countdown before the race starts -- in every racing game there is. Look, I get that some aspects of TOR are akin to those in WoW (which in turn are akin to those in Everquest and the like), but that's how video games work; you take things that people like and you try to make them better. A world where every video game needs to change the entire fabric of the genre it's made in is absurd.

Honestly, the "it's been done before, therefore a ripoff" argument is, and always has been bullshit. The easiest proof of this is Apocalypse Now. Yes, it is Heart of Darkness, that's the point.

The issue here, the WoW clone accusation isn't that TOR copies elements from MMOs as a whole. The issue is it snarfed up it's art style, and it's style to a degree that goes way beyond "it's in the same genre".

If we're going to go with the FPS analogy you dragged up earlier, it's not the use of guns. Fire up Borderlands, and then fire up any COD game, and try to tell me Borderlands is ripping off COD with a straight face. Now, go fire up MW3 and BF3, and tell me with a straight face that they aren't hideously derivative of one another.

This is where we're at with TOR. It takes elements that every MMO uses, but it also takes very heavily from WoW with some reskinning. And, honestly, that's not even really a criticism, coming from me. I could give a rat's ass if TOR is original. The only thing about "copying WoW", that I care about is that MMOs have tried over and over to copy WoW in order to capitalize on it's massive popularity. What we've seen, again and again is that this does not work. The MMOs that try to go toe to toe with WoW end up on life support.

There's story here. There's character here. There's something that's never been done before here. People just need to understand that this *is* an MMO. This isn't a new genre or a single player RPG. Come to it knowing this and maybe the inclusion of a story you personally change, characters who react based on how you've played and the ability to have relationships that can become intimate will sink in. This is an MMO. The most unique MMO there's been in a long while.

The issue is, to a large extent, TOR isn't sure what it is. It's a single player RPG pretending to be an MMO, or an MMO with a single player RPG bolted into it, either way it's an awkward situation.

Honestly, it's an MMO with a standard issue Bioware story bolted onto it. Anyone who things this is some kind of revolution is sadly mistaken. Now, a lot of the players this will appeal to are not MMO veterans, so the BS Bioware's been spewing about how this is the first MMO with an involved story is flat out not true.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

@Starke

Guess we will just have to disagree. Our opinions won't budge, lol.

 

[Alandoril]

You forgot to mention the buggy end game, lack of some very basic MMO features, a broken crafting system and frankly amateurish PvP system. And in many respects this is still a grindy WoW clone.

I do however agree that the story quests and planet main quests are great. Worth it if you basically think of this as KoToR 3, but stretched out into an MMO because they wanted to make even more money.

 

[rsvp42]

RPers in Champions Online have to basically ignore every quest if they want to RP a villain or anything besides a goody two-shoes.

Honestly, that's more of a tone issue with CO's writing, though. It's true, there is no villain faction, so no RPing an active villain. The rest is soaked in the silver age. So the absolute insanity in the quest threads creates a kind of drug fueled bender of heroes who are both paragons of humanity and utter psychopaths. Superheros who will gleefully gun down mind controlled prison guards, while being unwilling to talk to a man about the dangers of his butterfly collection.

Right, but I trust you got my point: RPers must always contend with the game's story when it conflicts with their character concept. TOR's conflicts with such RP are no more egregious than any other MMO's, they're just better presented and more central to the storytelling, as well as more supportive of roleplay thinking even in non-RPers.

 

[grammarye]

The review is perhaps a little overly positive without focusing on any of the negatives that do put some off, but I really think the MMO genre is suffering from a very hostile market currently.

Reading these posts I think 'Have you ever actually enjoyed an MMO, or do you complain this bitterly about everything you try?' - mostly because the minutiae people end up arguing over are so tiny & irrelevant to the meat of the game that either the games are all identical and you hate them all, or the games are all identical but people love to rage about tiny details.

TOR's longevity is not proven as it stands. There's plenty Bioware have to prove yet before that is shown one way or the other.

As for grouping - I find it's usually the utterly anti-social people who say 'it's a solo game, there's no incentive for grouping' because firstly, there are incentives and needs to group in TOR, and secondly, it's never been a requirement of any game to force people to group up. If you can manage to hold a conversation for thirty seconds, you can find a group and guild without too much trouble. Oddly enough, the Internet is busily showing us how many obnoxious people there are out there. People managed to group in text-based MUDs a decade ago without the game forcing it down their throats.

The rest of the arguments all center around what is subjective opinion over the precise mechanisms around why you go out and kill ten boars - because every MMO ever has done that. Even EVE for crying out loud does that. The basic MMO mechanics haven't changed yet. Even the all-hailed GW2 will be the same mechanics. You log on, you go find something, and you go press skills at it until it dies. The rest of the game is how well it sells that timesink and how much fun you have doing it. That ultimately is subjective, and the idea that one person should tell another 'Oh I wish people would stop saying X is great' is just laughable. Free will in action.

For me, the story in TOR allows me to play the role and mould that provided character; it's a dual effort as it were, I can only mould within the constraints allowed, but there is plenty of room for motivations & thought processes. In WoW, to pick a popular MMO at random, I never had any incentive at all to play the role. It was just another boring grind. TOR had me stop and ask 'How do I answer this question? What do I do next? What is appropriate for my character right now?'. I emotively reacted. Never had that in an MMO before, and I've played plenty. To each their own.

 

[PingoBlack]

For me, the essence of true roleplaying is being given a choice within the context of a story and then seeing the results of that choice play out in front of you. TOR does that very well, at least within the confines of the MMO genre.

Eh, MMO genre? Come on, Steve ...

Reading your review again, it's a review of KotOR 3. You have not even talked about massive or multi-player details much except in passing.

Honestly, we all know that fully voiced personal story is impossible to expand upon, expansions will be slow and expensive to produce and endgame gameplay is reportedly very slim for a million people or so to keep paying rent in order to buy more voice acted single player bits.

Your review is much less distorted than most reviews out there, but still it fails to actually review massive or multi player bits.

4.5/5 is only valid for solo play first time, otherwise it will be impossible to not write about many downsides brought upon by EA/BioWare choices. I for one severely dislike them using high resolution textures for adds, but they cannot be used in game. Nearly as bad as DX10 in AoC, that was on box but not in game until year after release.

 

[Starke]

RPers in Champions Online have to basically ignore every quest if they want to RP a villain or anything besides a goody two-shoes.

Honestly, that's more of a tone issue with CO's writing, though. It's true, there is no villain faction, so no RPing an active villain. The rest is soaked in the silver age. So the absolute insanity in the quest threads creates a kind of drug fueled bender of heroes who are both paragons of humanity and utter psychopaths. Superheros who will gleefully gun down mind controlled prison guards, while being unwilling to talk to a man about the dangers of his butterfly collection.

Right, but I trust you got my point: RPers must always contend with the game's story when it conflicts with their character concept. TOR's conflicts with such RP are no more egregious than any other MMO's, they're just better presented and more central to the storytelling, as well as more supportive of roleplay thinking even in non-RPers.

TOR's conflicts are much more egregious than other MMOs because of the way it tries to force feed you the plot. You want to play a couple Jedi knights working together to unravel a mystery? Sorry, you cannot do that. You can each instance into your own separate class quest points, or you can do them twice every time you're together. You want to roleplay a smuggler? Well, unfortunately you're going to need to follow the exact same "get your ship back" plot as everyone else. You want to roleplay as a bounty hunter? Well, you can't. You're going to have to go "prove yourself" in that hunt every damn time. The thing is, you can't roleplay a character of your choice in TOR. You can roleplay one of the characters Bioware has preconstructed for you on the preconstructed path they set for you. And, unlike most MMOs, you don't even get to skip parts if they're out of character, or if you don't want to deal with it because the entire game's progression is locked into that. You think your Bounty Hunter would just go out there into the galaxy and make a name for themselves? Well tough shit, because you can't. You need to compete against the Mandalorians in order to "prover yourself."

Where Champions says "here, you're a superhero", TOR says "here, you can play this choose your own adventure book we made for you."

snip

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong.

Don't be, punctuation is difficult for many, what you should have typed is "I'm sorry. This is just wrong:"

You cannot honestly say that WoW catered to any kind of roleplaying.

You've never seen roleplaying on MMOs before? I mean, they're out there. Some of them are fucking disturbing, but they're out there.

The game has no consequences of choice, no true options on character morality,

Much like The Old Republic.

So, here's the thing, and this is kinda critical, The Old Republic doesn't have a morality system, not really. It has the standard issue Bioware "morality", that is to say, Lawful Stupid, and Chaotic Stupid. That isn't a morality system, it's not. Even Fallout 3 did a better job, and that had a fucking terrible morality system.

Here's the other thing that's kinda critical. All of that consequence shit? Anything you do? It cannot, in any way shape or form affect the game world around you. You want to talk to someone in a public place you might kill? Well, you can't. So you get shuffled off to a contact, who brings him over (from the netherworld) when you talk to him, you converse, kill him in conversation (if you go that route), and wander off, the contact is still there, and all anyone else saw was you talking to someone and doing nothing.

The biggest illusion with TOR, and it's to an extent a somewhat well crafted one is that your actions can have consequences. They really can't, and don't, but it does look like they do.

the only way you could make a character work is bascily to ignore the entire GAME and just use the world (and even then, a lot of things needs to be ignored for it to work, including most of the other players).

Well, that's overstating it a bit. The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of players out there, who do roleplay in MMOs, as characters they've created. And, yeah, not every concept will work in the world, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room to roleplay. What's more, roleplaying in MMOs tends to feed back into the old model from P&P gaming. That is to say, groups of players roleplaying together. Quite frankly, this is something that The Old Republic shits all over the way it handles the class based zones.

SWTOR gives you that options aswell, but in addtiotion feeds you excellent story hooks through your class campagin.

Honestly, if you think this is "excellent" writing from Bioware, you need to go back and take another look at the original KOTOR. If you think these are "excellent story hooks" in general. you really need to get out there and read something that isn't licensed fiction. You want to see good writing hooks in Star Wars? Dig up the Thrawn trilogy, and forget this mess.

Some of it must be ignored, but in acctuality much less than in any other MMORPG to date.

That's because it's force fed to you. In most MMOs if you want to skip something, if it doesn't appeal, you can. You can shelve it and move on to something else. In TOR that is, flat out, impossible. You will play exactly the story Bioware wants you to experience with no room for deviation. If you want to do the sidequest material, great, if you dont', tough shit, you need to go get up to spec for the next area.

The whole atmossphere just gives itself to roleplaying, instead of treating it as a annoying tack on that comes between you and the ability to get shiny pixlated EPIX.

Again, it only lends itself to roleplaying for the terminally unimaginative. Someone who literally can't see their way to roleplaying without a conversation dial in front of them is someone who should have our sympathy.

Roleplaying in MMOs is, almost always, about finding a group of likeminded people, or friends, or both, and having a good time playing your characters together. This is the kind of thing that keeps MMOs going. And, while I'd be lying if I said I knew this is what kept WOW afloat, this is what most MMOs really are all about. If I wanted to sit at home, alone, and roleplay in isolation, I've got a shitload of single player RPGs available to me. If I don't, if I want to sit at home, alone, and have a good time with friends, that's what MMOs tend to be for.

If I'm going to be spending time with my friends, I'm an imaginative guy, I'm not going to want to be confined to Bioware's train yard.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. You cannot honestly say that WoW catered to any kind of roleplaying. The game has no consequences of choice, no true options on character morality, the only way you could make a character work is bascily to ignore the entire GAME and just use the world (and even then, a lot of things needs to be ignored for it to work, including most of the other players).

I haven't played SWTOR or WoW, but a game where roleplaying is possible does not need "consequence of choice" or "options on character morality;" a social environment where you play with other people works just as well, and people use that social environment to roleplay with other people. Because, strangely enough, some people do want to just use the game world merely as a backdrop for their roleplaying, and not base it off some developer's black-and-white ideas of morality (e.g., "Be a Saint," "Eat a baby," "[insert joke response here]").

Hell, you don't even need morality to actually roleplay in a game. The Sims is a good example. While it might be a "virtual dollhouse," you're still able to play with your sims and roleplay as them throughout their life. Sure, there is some sort of "consequence of choice" in the game, but it's pretty limited, and ultimately doesn't affect that much of the gameplay experience. But it's still a game where roleplaying is possible.

 

[Starke]

@Starke

Guess we will just have to disagree. Our opinions won't budge, lol.

The issue is this, Bioware is like McDonnalds. And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. You pay your money, you know exactly what you're going to get, and I do mean exactly. The one time I remember them delivering something that wasn't their normal flavor (DA2, not-epic with a heavy dose of sarcasm), the fans freaking rioted.

Some people like McDonnalds, some don't, but that Bioware stamp on the package is basically enough to know if the game's story for you or not.

I think their quality's been on a downward slide since KOTOR, slow, but gradually picking up pace, with an errant spike of quality in DA2. TOR has continued this downward trend.

To an extent, in both the story, and the gameplay, TOR puts enough on the table very early to let you know what the rest of the game will be. You felt compelled to defend it, but the Sith Inquisitor starts off as one of the stronger bits of writing here. What it isn't, is something new. My GF and I ran a pair of Sith all the way through Korriban together. And aside from the opening cutscene for the inquisitor, I saw it all. I'm not bashing it for being cliche in that it's fedex quests, I'm bashing it for having all the characters I've seen so many times before rewashed and reused, again.

The same for the Bounty Hunter, the Imperial Agent, the Smuggler, and both Jedi. The only class I didn't see anything for was the Trooper, and I find it very hard to believe that was really something unexpected, hidden away.

 

[Starke]

Your review is much less distorted than most reviews out there, but still it fails to actually review massive or multi player bits.

Something I've noticed, but haven't gone back and confirmed. TOR has been getting really solid reviews from sites that don't usually do MMOs. But websites that are primarily MMO driven have been trashing it... Now, that could be warped perception on my part.

It also occurs to me, the people defending it tend to be people who don't play MMOs, where this is either their first or the ones they previously tried didn't appeal to them. Which is where you put TOR in front of any WoW vet, and they'll identify it as a reskin, or in front of a non-WoW, MMO Vet, and they'll attribute it towards WoW with slightly less certainty. But the people who try to refute that have never seen these game mechanics before...

Anyway, it's a weird random observation. Sorry.

 

[rsvp42]

TOR's conflicts are much more egregious than other MMOs because of the way it tries to force feed you the plot. You want to play a couple Jedi knights working together to unravel a mystery? Sorry, you cannot do that. You can each instance into your own separate class quest points, or you can do them twice every time you're together. You want to roleplay a smuggler? Well, unfortunately you're going to need to follow the exact same "get your ship back" plot as everyone else. You want to roleplay as a bounty hunter? Well, you can't. You're going to have to go "prove yourself" in that hunt every damn time. The thing is, you can't roleplay a character of your choice in TOR. You can roleplay one of the characters Bioware has preconstructed for you on the preconstructed path they set for you. And, unlike most MMOs, you don't even get to skip parts if they're out of character, or if you don't want to deal with it because the entire game's progression is locked into that. You think your Bounty Hunter would just go out there into the galaxy and make a name for themselves? Well tough shit, because you can't. You need to compete against the Mandalorians in order to "prover yourself."

Where Champions says "here, you're a superhero", TOR says "here, you can play this choose your own adventure book we made for you."

You didn't really read my first post. The story in TOR is just as easy to ignore as in any MMO. You can skip right past all the conversations, ignore what you're really saying and just do the objectives and collect your experience and move on. Yes, BioWare provides a story, but that's the default story. The story you create for your character can be whatever you want and BioWare's story can play as large or as little a part in it as you want. Why? Because when you're off RPing with other people, they're going to accept whatever story you've created for yourself. Any decent RPer probably has experience with that because every game has a story.

On the flip side, if you're not a big RPer, this story structure helps encourage it. It's why I linked to the Penny Arcade article about it. Anecdotal evidence counts for a lot with this issue. The "right answer" here is whatever works for people. Maybe you could never RP in SW:TOR. Fine. Others can though and it's not hard to look past the provided story and create your own for RP purposes.

Yeah, the same class thing can be a bother, but it's a small one. Haven't really heard any complaints in game. This is another one of those "problems" with the game that gets blown out of proportion by personal preference, as evidenced by it being a deal-breaker for you and trifling concern for me.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong.

Don't be, punctuation is difficult for many, what you should have typed is "I'm sorry. This is just wrong:"

That was spectacularly pedantic of you. But if you wanted to go down that road, your version would be better off with a semicolon. That said, I don't think the original was wrong to begin with.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

@Starke

As I said, we each think we are right and nothing's going to change it--opinions tend to do that. Best to leave it there.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

The D&D crowd remembers the days when roleplaying was a social event, where you met up and RP'd with other like minded players. More than that, for these guys, RPing has always been a custom experience- no two characters are ever the same, because the player gets to decide on every detail of their gaming persona. Lastly, the RP experience is not defined by what dialogue you choose, but by how you interact in the game world with other people. For these guys, games like WOW are essentially the D&D experience set to pixels, and so provide a much greater roleplaying experience than TOR.

I don't understand this comment. Not an insult to you or your opinion, I just don't understand how one can feel WoW, which has no inbuilt ability for the player's character to interact with NPC's beyond "accept quest" and "x", or any way for your character to engage in quests beyond the exact way they are described, contains more RP potential. You group up on TOR, you hang out in cities, you create your character, decide how they behave, how they talk, their morality, their appearance, the way they complete quests, who you hang out with etc., etc.

I also don't understand how TOR is any less social. I've played the entire game with a friend. We bought it at the same time, created our characters (many of them ) and always play in a party.

Easy example: I roleplayed my Sith Inquisitor as a Republic spy who infiltrated the Sith homeworld to learn their training techniques. My friend? They roleplayed a power obsessed madman, bent on causing as much suffering as possible. We had vastly different experiences; characters he killed, I saved; people I worked for, he never spoke to. I played WoW for three years (and loved it until just after WotLK was released) and not once was roleplaying built into the game. Not once. You're a druid? Alright, here's your quest. Do exactly what it says and come back. That's it. You can add all the roleplaying you want within that, but at the end of the day, you have to do exactly what it says. Guy gives you a quest in TOR? Hold him to ransom, do what he says, kill him, ignore him, do what he says but do it differently, pair up with a like-minded individual, form a large group, form a group and betray them just before you complete your mission--all ways more roleplaying is built into the TOR story.

You say WoW has more roleplaying potential, but TOR has everything WoW has *and* a story the player actually interacts with and influences. The way you worded your comment, it sounds like someone who's never played the game, if I'm honest. If you can name a feature WoW has that allows for more roleplaying than TOR, I would be very shocked. It sounds to me like personal preference.

 

[Quaade]

Does it fix the need to grind and the repeated, fetch quests and kill x number of monkeys for a reward.

Does it fix the need to grind and the repeated, fetch quests and kill x number of monkeys for a reward.

No, that's pretty much the entire game, and you will do them all the same way, by beating people on the head with a stick.

There's no break in the tedium, no funny ability you get for that quest, no vehicle you use for purpose Y. All in all TOR feels very lowtech because you don't get to use the tech for anything.

Everything happens in cutscenes, virtually NO ingame effect happens ingame. If you blow something major up, bar a few exceptions, you get a cutscene showing it and once it ends the item you blew up, stands there right as rain.

 

[Quaade]

Does it fix the need to grind and the repeated, fetch quests and kill x number of monkeys for a reward.

Does it fix the need to grind and the repeated, fetch quests and kill x number of monkeys for a reward.

No, that's pretty much the entire game, and you will do them all the same way, by beating people on the head with a stick.

There's no break in the tedium, no funny ability you get for that quest, no vehicle you use for purpose Y. All in all TOR feels very lowtech because you don't get to use the tech for anything.

Everything happens in cutscenes, virtually NO ingame effect happens ingame. If you blow something major up, bar a few exceptions, you get a cutscene showing it and once it ends the item you blew up, stands there right as rain.

 

[Starke]

You didn't really read my first post.

I did, otherwise it would have been impossible to do a blow by blow breakdown of everything wrong with it.

The story in TOR is just as easy to ignore as in any MMO. You can skip right past all the conversations, ignore what you're really saying and just do the objectives and collect your experience and move on.

And you've obviously never played the game. You can jump through the dialog, space bar or escape, I forget which, but you cannot skip the missions. You can't. I'm not saying that you can't ignore the dialog, it's got to be less painfully stupid if you do, but what you can't do is skip ahead. Again, you talk about the game encouraging you to roleplay, but it's not. It takes away any freedom to actually roleplay in order to force feed you through a single linear path.

Yes, BioWare provides a story, but that's the default story. The story you create for your character can be whatever you want and BioWare's story can play as large or as little a part in it as you want. Why? Because when you're off RPing with other people, they're going to accept whatever story you've created for yourself. Any decent RPer probably has experience with that because every game has a story.

At which point you're being hideously disingenuous to the game itself.

On the flip side, if you're not a big RPer, this story structure helps encourage it.

Again, this is "encouragement" at gunpoint. You can choose to skip the dialog, but you can't skip the story. You understand the distinction?

It's why I linked to the Penny Arcade article about it. Anecdotal evidence counts for a lot with this issue.

Honestly, as evidence goes, that doesn't work that well, unless you're suggesting I go back and look at it again when it goes free to play.

The "right answer" here is whatever works for people. Maybe you could never RP in SW:TOR. Fine. Others can though and it's not hard to look past the provided story and create your own for RP purposes.

Oddly I'm fine with people liking it. I'm not fine with people saying it's well written, or saying that it's revolutionary to the MMO genre. And if you're wondering why, that's because it's flat out not true.

Yeah, the same class thing can be a bother, but it's a small one. Haven't really heard any complaints in game. This is another one of those "problems" with the game that gets blown out of proportion by personal preference, as evidenced by it being a deal-breaker for you and trifling concern for me.

This was a deal breaker for me. The thing is, and this really is an issue, as far as I can tell, TOR doesn't encourage group play at all. It's a bunch of people out there all playing their own solo game, and that would be fine if this wasn't asking for a subscription fee on top of that. This does effectively mask a couple issues, but, I really don't think it will help the survival of the game in the long run.